19/08/2025 -
A recurring observation in population genetics is that Ashkenazi Jews often cluster with Southern Italians and Sicilians in PCA plots and G25 analyses. This similarity, however, does not imply direct kinship, but rather parallel demographic trajectories that produced convergent ancestry compositions.
Shared Mediterranean–Levantine Foundations
Both Ashkenazi Jews and Southern Italians share high proportions of Southern European and Levantine ancestry.
For Ashkenazi Jews, the Levantine ancestry reflects their deep Middle Eastern origin, with continuity from ancient Jewish populations and subsequent integration with local Italians during the Roman Empire. Ancient DNA studies show that Jewish communities in Roman Italy retained Near Eastern ancestry while admixing with ...
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11/08/2025 -
With the launch of our new ancient DNA test, many people are exploring their results with great enthusiasm. That’s wonderful — but it’s just as important to understand what these results truly mean, and what they do not mean.
We cannot directly share long DNA segments with ancient samples
Data from ancient remains is often incomplete and degraded, typically based on a limited set of SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms).
These are scattered points across the genome, not continuous stretches of DNA. As a result, “segment sharing” in the modern sense
cannot be established with ancient individuals.
What you are seeing is shared allele frequency
The core metric is how often specific genetic variants appear in both you and an ancient sample. This refle...
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28/07/2025 -
The Roman Empire forged a vast and interconnected world, extending from Britain to the Euphrates. As imperial power shifted and evolved—from the unified Roman state to the eastern-focused Byzantine Empire—so too did the people who inhabited its heartlands. Recent ancient DNA studies reveal a deep genetic footprint of Anatolian and Middle Eastern ancestry in Italy, most visible during the Roman Imperial period and under Byzantine rule in the south.
This eastern connection was not fleeting. It shaped the genetic legacy of Italy, especially in Calabria, Apulia, and the Campanian coast, areas that remained linked to Constantinople well into the Middle Ages.
1. Imperial Rome: An Empire of Migrants
The groundbreaking study by Antonio et al. (2019)
(Science, aay6826) analyzed ge...
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17/07/2025 -
In the silence of a 5th-century cemetery in Angers, in the heart of what is now western France, a man was buried. More than a millennium later, he would be given the code name FRA009, and his DNA would tell an unexpected story—a story that stretches across the Mediterranean, from North Africa to the Loire Valley.
Sequenced as part of a large-scale study of French genetic history published in Nature Communications (2024), FRA009 stood out as an anomaly. While all other medieval individuals clustered genetically with modern or ancient western Europeans, FRA009 showed a strong affinity with present-day North Africans. His mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, as well as his Y-chromosome haplogroup E-FTG24236, all point to a recent North African origin, making him a rare and precious witness o...
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07/07/2025 -
The Iberian Peninsula—today’s Spain and Portugal—has long been a meeting point of diverse peoples and cultures from across Europe and the Mediterranean. Recent ancient DNA studies have revolutionized our understanding of its population history, revealing waves of migration, mixing, and adaptation over thousands of years.
From the first hunter-gatherers to the Bronze Age migrations, the Roman Empire, and the medieval kingdoms, Iberia’s genetic landscape reflects a complex story of continuity and transformation. Let’s take a tour through this fascinating journey, uncovering how science is illuminating the many layers of Iberian ancestry.
1. The Deepest Layers: Hunter-Gatherer Ancestry
The earliest inhabitants of Iberia were Late Pleistocene and early Holoce...
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